Substantially flat articles having substantial thickness and length dimensions, such as, for example, plate glass members, garage doors, and the like, need to have their edge regions protected during, for example, transportation and shipping thereof from their manufacturing facilities to their storage and/or point of sale locations so as to prevent damage from occurring to such edge regions prior to the purchase of such articles by consumers. It is conventional practice to utilize substantially rigid, laminated U-shaped channel members as edge protectors whereby the U-shaped channel members are mounted upon the edge regions of the articles and secured thereto by, for example, suitable strapping. One type of conventional edge protector which has been used for the foregoing purposes has been derived from the packing container which is disclosed within U.S. Pat. No. 4,976,374 which issued to Macaluso on Dec. 11, 1990.
More particularly, while the aforenoted patent is directed toward a composite packing container which is used to package elongated articles and is seen to comprise a substantially U-shaped base unit 10 and a substantially U-shaped cover unit 12 which are mated together and secured by means of strapping bands 16 as best seen in FIG. 3, the individual base units 10 and cover units 12 have been employed in the packaging industry as edge protectors so as to protect the edge regions of, for example, substantially flat articles having substantial length and thickness dimensions. It is noted, however, that the base units 10 and the cover units 12 are substantially rigid and inflexible. In addition, when produced in accordance with mass-production techniques, while each base unit 10 will differ in size, for example, from each cover unit 12 so as to permit the interfitting or assembly of the respective base units 10 and the cover units 12 as shown in FIG. 3, all of the base units 10 will be of the same size with respect to each other and all of the cover units 12 will be of the same size with respect to each other. Consequently, neither the base units 10 nor the cover units 12 can be nested together in a stack so as to facilitate the economical shipping or transportation thereof in a manner which optimizes shipping, cargo, or transportation space and costs.
A need therefore exists in the packaging art for a substantially U-shaped packaging member which can be utilized as an edge protector so as to protect the edge regions of substantially flat articles having substantial length and thickness dimensions, and wherein such edge protectors are uniquely structured so as to nevertheless permit or facilitate the nesting or stacking of a plurality of such edge protectors in order to optimize shipping, cargo, or transportation space and costs. In particular, a need exists in the packaging art for a substantially U-shaped packaging member which can be utilized as an edge protector which, in effect, has different structural orientations, dispositions, configurations, or modes whereby when, for example, the edge protector is disposed within a first mode or configuration, the edge protector can in fact perform its function as an edge protector, whereas when the edge protector is disposed within a second mode or configuration, the edge protector can be readily stacked along with other similar edge protectors for shipping and transportation purposes.